


Redo

by deadinderry



Category: Gone Series - Michael Grant
Genre: what is even happening
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28198221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadinderry/pseuds/deadinderry
Summary: The last thing Howard remembers is being torn apart. Then he wakes up in his own bed. [this is some weird AU though to be completely fair it is not entirely disproved by canon i make my own rules]
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> sooooo i just decided to write from the POV of like, my favorite gone character because i wanted to write some fanfiction but had no ideas. so it's good knowing that yeah, i can still spew out some howard b ullshit even though it's been forever since ive reread the series. 
> 
> if you like my writing i do have original works published through amazon, let me know if you want my author name bc like, i do not fanfic often.,

The last thing Howard remembers is being torn apart.

He jerks awake, sitting up and nearly whacking his head on his window frame. Childhood bedroom window frame. You know, the window frame he hasn’t slept under for actual fucking months.

“What the fuck,” he mutters, rubbing at his eyes and squinting. Yeah, he’s in his bedroom all right. Comics and video games and models decorate the shelves. Couple of posters. His alarm clock is blaring at him to wake up, which is weird, because he hasn’t used an alarm clock, not one like this, at least in--

In _months_.

He reaches over and smacks it a few times before it shuts up, and then Howard gets out of bed, and that’s when he realizes two things: he’s wearing clean pajamas, and also, while he’s skinny, he’s not ‘starving-child-in-Africa’ skinny. He’s just regular ‘early-teen-boy’ skinny. He can feel his bones but he can’t play the xylophone on his ribcage.

“Don’t tell me it was a dream,” he says. Only to himself, because obviously there’s no one else in here. But maybe this is the dream. Maybe he didn’t actually die. Maybe he just… maybe they found him in time, and then Lana healed him up, but right now he’s just floating, floating, floating.

If it’s a dream, maybe he’ll be able to see his mom again.

Howard makes his way to his bedroom door and opens it. Yeah, this is for sure his house from before everything went ass-up. He leans out and yells: “ _Mom!_ ”

A little bit of rustling, and then an answer from the kitchen: “ _What, Howard?”_

“Oh, shit,” Howard mutters, and he’s down those stairs faster than the Breeze. He barrels into the kitchen and glances at the calendar on his way—calendar reads first day of school.

Howard does some mental math on how long he’s got until it all goes to shit again, if that’s what’s happening. But he can multitask; he also gives his mom the biggest hug in the world. She stumbles, a little, surprised.

“I made you breakfast,” she said. “For the first day of school. Are you going to walk with Charles?”

“Uh—probably,” Howard says, though he thinks that if he sees Orc with skin he might just nope straight the fuck out. “I guess.”

He sits down, and he can’t stop staring at his mom. She either doesn’t notice or just accepts that her son is a weirdo, because she works on making him up a plate. The thing is—of course, Howard missed his mom. He’s pretty sure that all of them missed their parents, if they had parents worth missing. Orc, probably not. But Howard’s got all right parents.

He just never let himself _think_ about it, you know, in what he figures was either a dream or real life, if this is the dream, or if he went back in time—maybe he’s a freak, too, maybe his power is going back in time when he dies. If that’s the case, he’s really gotta make sure he’s out of the town when the poof happens. Maybe he should warn some people.

But he’s a little wary of that, because while him being gone probably wouldn’t affect anything (at least… wouldn’t affect anything negatively; if anything, a FAYZ with no Howard is a nicer FAYZ), there are a lot of these guys who, without them, the rest of the kids in the FAYZ would be fucked. Edilio, for example. Best fucking guy in the universe, Edilio.

Maybe if he was more noble, he’d be thinking of how to convince everyone to leave instead of just planning his own escape, but while he’s a smooth-talker, he’s not exactly that charismatic. Not charismatic enough to convince not only everyone in Perdido Beach but _also_ everyone in Coates (because he’s not going to leave Dekka in this hellhole) to take a day off from school. Oh, right, and also let’s grab all the babies and everything. Maybe if he was the kind of guy who could fake like, an incoming nuclear bomb, or something… or if he could call in bomb threats to the… _whole fucking town?_ Shit, where did people like _Lana_ even come from?

It’s too much, so he just eats the eggs that his mom puts in front of him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> See, the thing is, even if Howard had an idea on how to even start thinking on getting everyone out before everything goes to shit again, he’s pretty sure that he forgot it as soon as he stepped outside and saw people who he knows are dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mostly rumination. also this is making me want to re-read the gone series. god damn it.

See, the thing is, even if Howard had an idea on how to even start thinking on getting everyone out before everything goes to shit again, he’s pretty sure that he forgot it as soon as he stepped outside and saw people who he knows are dead. He sees Bette. He sees EZ. He sees _Hunter-fucking-Lefkowitz_ doing kickflips and he’s so overwhelmed by the fact that his Hunter would have faceplanted about a thousand times that he says, “Nice one,” as he walks past.

Hunter gives him a suspicious look and kicks his board into his hand and Howard remembers that he’s an asshole.

He raises his hands. “No joke, Lefkowitz,” he says. “Turning over a new leaf.”

“What, so you’re not going to egg on Orc beating up on little kids anymore?”

Howard shrugs. From what he remembers, before the FAYZ Hunter was never really on his and Orc’s radar—maybe he got his lunch money stolen once or twice, but he was a generally cool kid. Kind of asshole himself, if Howard’s remembering right. Of course, none of that deserved getting whacked in the head with a crowbar and an attempting lynching, but you know—Hunter’s not really anyone to be judging Howard here.

“Maybe not,” he says.

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Hunter says, but he does look a little friendlier. He shakes hair out of his eyes and grins. He’s wearing braces. Howard doesn’t remember his Hunter with braces. Did he get them pried out or did he get them off before the FAYZ.

“Hey, when you get rid of those?” Howard asks, nodding at Hunter’s mouth.

Hunter runs his tongue over his teeth. “This weekend. Too unlucky to get ‘em off before school starts. Still gotta wear a retainer, though.” He fake-vomits and Howard moves on.

He makes mental notes, trying to remember _every goddam thing_ that happens when the FAYZ happens. Maybe if he _knows_ beforehand, he can stop some stuff. They can send some people to Coates straightaway.

To be honest, most of the early early early problems were… started by Howard himself, but he thinks that he was maybe halfway to good guy by the end of it there. At least—he wasn’t a _problem_ anymore.

His feet take him toward Orc’s house. Before he gets there, he sees Edilio, and he raises up a hand. Edilio looks at him like he’s absolutely fucking insane, and then Howard remembers, also, that most of his interactions with Edilio prior to the FAYZ, prior to… a _while_ into the FAYZ, were cracks about his debatably legal status in the good old U.S.-of-A.

To be fair, Howard was _right_.

He lowers his hand and pretends he didn’t wave in the first place. This isn’t his Edilio. This is ‘wetback’ not ‘Deely-O.’ This kid doesn’t have the self-confidence and _drive_ that his Edilio had. The kid’ll turn out like that if they end up in the FAYZ again. Some people crack under pressure and some people bloom. Edilio was the latter.

See, that’s the funny thing—he’s so used to fucked up shit that he’s not even questioning this anymore. He’s just kind of assuming that before too long they’ll be back in the FAYZ, he’ll just have the advantage of knowing all the fucking up stuff that happened the first time.

He shivers, a little, and shoves his hands into his pockets. It’s going to be so weird, looking at all these little fuckers and seeing what they would becoming in a real-ass life-or-death situation where some people have these unfair, weird-ass powers.

But, hey. He’s kind of a freak, now, too.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is so weird to see Orc with miles of pink, actual skin that Howard just sort of stands there for a few seconds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well it has been a while and i don't know where i'm going with this but i am sure that it will run howdilio at some point and also enjoy more howard navel-gazing

It is so weird to see Orc with miles of pink, actual skin that Howard just sort of stands there for a few seconds. Orc is standing like Howard supposes he always does—like some sort of knuckle-dragging primate situation, here; caveman; jutting forehead-type. He thinks this and then he immediately feels bad, because if nothing else the FAYZ gave him a fucking conscience.

Shit, he came up with that name, didn’t he?

“Hey,” he says, finally, once he’s able to accept that Orc is no longer a pile of gravel.

“What’re you looking at?” Orc asks.

“Uh—” Howard starts, and Orc comes past him, whacking him genially on the back as he passes.

“I ain’t no candy,” Orc says, and Howard is reminded of their pre-FAYZ relationship, which was a lot closer to that of one of those little fish that eat parasites off of sharks than like, real friendship. Everyone assumed that Howard hung around Orc for protection, and, well, they weren’t entirely wrong. At least not pre-FAYZ.

“Right,” Howard mutters, and follows Orc down the sidewalk. Orc is listening to his cheap-o MP3 player, and so Howard remembers that before school started his mom got him a new iPod, so he plugs in his headphones, too. Orc is into heavy metal, because he’s a stereotype, and Howard is into 90s hip-hop, because he’s also a stereotype. So Orc has got _Slipknot_ pounded into his head and Howard has Eazy-E. Howard’s always liked Eazy-E because he was fucking tiny, and so Howard has always been able to relate.

So they slouch their way to school, and Orc pushes kids out of his way like a bowling ball. It’s weird to fall back into this, but it’s also incredibly easy. All he has to do is follow Orc’s footsteps. Which is kind of how people started dying last time, but, you know—

He catches sight of Sam Temple and Quinn Whatever-his-last-name was (Gatler? Something with a G. At this point Quinn is The Fisherman in Howard’s head); Quinn’s talking with his hands with that stupid fedora perched on his head, because Quinn took a while before the FAYZ made him a decent person. Not that Howard is exactly the person to be judging, here.

But it’s weird to see the two of them together.

* * *

And then classes start and Howard is reminded of another thing he hasn’t done in a while: algebra. Because beyond the simple, “If I have two cans of corn and a handle of whisky, how long can I survive? Keep in mind the variable of Orc possibly downing the whisky before I manage to trade it for more food,” Howard hasn’t thought about math in _months_. English is probably going to be easier, both for the fact that Howard’s always been decent at English and also because after the power went out, books were like, the only entertainment left in the FAYZ, so he’s _read_ in the last few months, at least, but math and science are going to be rough.

He doesn’t have any classes with Orc. Orc’s in all the remedial classes, and Howard is ‘a bright kid, if he would stop hanging around the Merriman kid,’ because you can’t even say that Howard doesn’t apply himself—he _does_ , because his mom will kill him if he brings home Cs. So he pulls As and the occasional B and it always drives Astrid the Genius insane when he gets better grades than she does in like, English class. Because she’s so logical that sometimes, _sometimes_ , Howard can beat her out.

“That summer slump hitting hard, there, Howard?” the math teacher says as he passes by Howard who is definitely staring into oblivion with a look of ‘what the fuck’ on his face.

“Yeah,” Howard says. He doesn’t say much more. He knows that pre-FAYZ and even during-FAYZ Howard would’ve had something snarky to say, but he’s still so damn freaked out by everything that’s happening that he’s only able to speak in monosyllables.

Across the room, he catches the eye of Edilio Escobar.

Predictably, the dude looks straight back at his desk, which makes Howard’s chest squeeze a little bit, because his Edilio would’ve looked straight back at him. Flat-eyed, dead fish kind of stare, sure, but he wouldn’t have backed down. And it’s so weird, because all Howard can do is look around and see everyone, and then see how they’d look during the FAYZ. See how they’d die.

Enough to drive a man crazy.


End file.
